Karen's Story
by Riyu Shimoji
Summary: In the midst of raging family war Karen desperately seeks someone for comfort who understands. HM64
1. Default Chapter

"Well, screw you!!! I never cared anyway!!!!!!!"   
  
"Don't you talk that way to-"  
  
An old wood door slammed shut, echoing throughout the house.  
  
"...me," the man's voice finished.  
  
"Calm down, calm down. I'm sure she'll mellow out in a bit. You know how she is. It's going to be like last time, dear. There's no problem...." a woman's voice chimed in.  
  
These were the sounds that filled the large, old fashioned cottage-like house on the vineyard. There is a very old novel that begins by saying that happy families are like one another, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. In this case, the family here was unhappy for the same reason over and over again.  
  
Kai, the helper on the vineyard, sighed as he made this observation. He was slumped in a wooden chair in the corner, watching the master, Gotz, and his wife, Sasha, talking about their daughter who had just slammed the door and went off to wherever she did when these arguments rose up. Kai also observed that Gotz was always a gruff-looking person, having thick, bushy brown eyebrows and a beard to match. The vineyard master was somewhat short and very round. The way he carried his huge, fat muscular arms was intimidating too, and they almost always rested on his hips. Sasha, however, was something else. She was fair and thin, and he guessed that she was once very pretty, having golden-blond hair. Kai never saw that much of it because it was pulled back. Her hairstyle and the worry-lines in her face were making her appear old before her time. She always stood in the corner sighing to herself. Sasha was a very kind and welcoming woman, but now she had to struggle to be kind because of all the tension in the house.   
  
Kai had come to this village years and years ago. The master and his wife were very, very kind to him and made him feel quite at home, and this was why he decided to stay instead of moving on to the big city, which was the desire he was still yearning for. Only now he wanted it more and more, specifically because of the quarrels between Gotz and his daughter Karen that had started up only about two to three years ago. Karen, as well, wanted to leave here and that was the root of all the arguments. Karen was already seventeen years old and it was high time she had gotten married (the marriageable age in Flower Bud Village was between fifteen and sixteen) but suddenly these quaint fancies had risen inside her, and this is what her father did not understand.  
  
So the helper just sat in the corner, retying the purple bandanna around his head uneasily. He surely knew better than to sit around while the family was arguing, but he was given permission by the master to have a break. Plus all the tension and negative feelings going around made him feel physically troubled, so just sitting here stiffly could not be helped. Besides, Kai had witnessed so much more that it wouldn't matter to Gotz or Sasha anyway. Only this time it was a bit worse than usual because Karen had never said "screw you" to her father before. Still, it was no surprise. Karen could be very, very rude when she wanted to, and it was only a matter of time before she said "screw you" anyway.   
  
Finally deciding to get up, Kai left the house unnoticed and found Karen walking outside, apparently headed nowhere. Karen was very beautiful, with her green eyes like her mother, and long chestnut-brown hair with golden bangs. She was thin but carried the disposition of her spiteful father, but that quality she did not realize. Kai wondered just what Karen was thinking (besides hatred for her father, of course) and what she was all about.  
  
Karen was thinking, as her favorite brown boots crunched into the dry soil, about the cruelty she was being faced with. As a thousand times before, she weighed the situation in her mind and firmly decided that she was completely in the right and that her father was too stubborn and blind (in a figurative sense) to see that she was being totally fair and just about it. For one thing, the vineyard was doing terrible. For some reason the grapes just simply would not grow, and it's not like staying there would help it in the least. Furthermore, her father himself was always different from everybody else, so it was unfathomable to her why he would want to keep up with the old traditions. In her eyes, she wouldn't get married if she did not want to, and she wouldn't stay on the same chunk of soil just because her ancestors did instead of doing something else with her life if she didn't want to.   
  
Tears had sprung up in the corners of her pretty green eyes and in her opinion, her father was teasing her dreams and she was doomed to have her life under his control forever. Seconds later she grumbled at herself for becoming so sentimental about it. Karen felt that her father was simply dumber than she was, and that there was no need for her to suffer because of it. Leaving, itself, was the problem.   
  
Then Karen came across the memory that also made her feel sentimental. There was no denying that her father drank too much sometimes, and when she was younger her father used to dance with her when he drank. It stung her now that he had to intoxicate himself to show any sign that he loved her, and he never did that anymore. This was so long ago that Karen had become immune to this occurrence, and it had become part of her life, but when she deliberated on the subject like now, it made her all the more miserable.  
  
She hadn't realized this, of course, but she made a habit of using the psychological displacement method, and never noticed just how stupid the picket fence looked. Its ugliness irked her further and she decided to follow it out to see where it finally ended. In a matter of seconds she had stalked off the vineyard and was facing the pathway to Moon Mountain, one of her favorite refuges from her family life. Instead of taking the route up there, as Moon Mountain was a popular spot for several people in the village, she faced the opposite direction and walked off toward the beach. Even in the perfect springtime temperature few people went there, so she could exhale all her strife out into the whispers and caresses of the moist sea air.   
  
Karen never cried. At least not in a long time. She was almost always emotionally strong because she had a habit of carrying out an argument to its full climax, never wanting to let her guard down. The harder she tried not to cry on her trip to the beach, the harder her masculine boots crushed into the earth. Her hair whipped in the wind and she tenderly brushed her distinguishable beauty, her blonde bangs, out of her face, but was not quite so gentle with the dull chestnut-brown length of it in the back. The tears that escaped her eyes sluiced through her hair in the rush of the crisp spring air when she moved so swiftly. As her nerves settled down, she thought it disgusting for her family to act so spiteful when it wasn't two days after the New Year's Day festivities. The alcohol, the cheerfulness, the alcohol, the greetings, and the alcohol altogether made people in the village raring to start the year off well, and already her father provoked the aggressive side of Karen that she'd tried so hard to tuck away, to settle at the bottom of her soul to be weighed down by happier things. 


	2. Chapter 2

Karen tried hard to feel as much bliss and contentment as she was allowed to feel while stuck in this countryside village, the soles of her tough boots being slapped by the water's edge and then making smacking sounds as she picked them out of the sand when she walked. Yet even at the beach she could not fully tear her thoughts away from this consciousness that her life was forever to be under someone's control.

'One day I'll go away, and leave this place and be free to live my life the way I like', she had convinced herself all the other times she had been here. A few times she had acted like a daydreamy girl, carrying a thin stick in her hands and using it to draw or write her name in the sand and clearly envisioning the life she always wanted: not only the bustle of the big city, but to become famous for her dancing.

Not that she wasn't already notorious for it, of course. Of the five town bachelorettes she was known for her skill of graceful dancing if not for her wicked temper. She liked the beach as the best place to practice in seclusion. Right now she ran swiftly up the beach and then broke off into a beautiful twirl, the front of her right boot twisting into the sand. When she stepped off she saw that she had made a perfect circle and smiled to herself. It wasn't many who could keep steady in the sand.

A crab scuttled by from under the pier, disturbed from the shadows of Karen's fair and feminine silhouette. Karen watched its movements and followed it in her own interpretive dance, springing and bending her long, shapely legs. Her arms were well toned, too, and she held them in a firm, strong and poised position above her head.

In a matter of minutes she had been swept away by the wind. The roaring and slapping of the ocean waves sounded distinctly like the faint rustle of the applause of several people, people in her imagination that came to see her dance, people from the future telling her that she had the power in her to do what she wanted to do. All she needed was some support to help her get there. Flower Bud Village, to Karen, had no ambition. It was a town where you said you spent your life and complained to your grandchildren how simple life had been when you were a child.

Karen danced until her hamstrings were stretched enough and every muscle she used felt worn for the day. It was a marvelous feeling that gave her the sensation that she had worked harder in preparing for her dream. The sun was now hanging ostentatiously low on the horizon, splashing its vermilion-orange light around her the way water sluiced through a very weak dam. Soon she would have to be heading for the bar, where unfortunately her father went every evening and she worked part-time.

Walking along the shore one last time, she wished she could carry the salt-smell of the air with her. She carried her boots with her socks stuffed in them and didn't realize she made a mistake in doing so until she had stepped on a shell and cursed out loud for it.

Karen bent to examine the inflictor of her wound and noticed that the minute seashell was curled smoothly and pointed at the end, perfect for a ridiculous necklace. Didn't Popuri mention something like this to her once? She recalled one evening, after another bout with her father, in which she met Popuri here, and the pink-haired daughter of the town florist Lillia had been gathering what she called moonlight shells, believed to be used as good-luck charms specifically for love. It was hard for Karen to believe in such things when she thought love was so far away from her. Instead of picking it up and carrying it with her, or even giving it to Popuri, who loved them, she sifted some of the cool, gritty sand with her thumbs and buried it. In the midst of her hostile mood toward her family, she thought that the shell she found should have a proper grave, as did her willingness to fall in love. Being seventeen, it was too late for her, but to others that only meant preparations for her marriage should be made quickly.

"Just another day," sighed Karen half-heartedly without realizing she said it, and choosing to thoroughly ignore the secret of the little cream-white seashell that Popuri had certainly not been lying about. 


	3. Chapter 3

"Miss Karen!!!" Kai yelped enthusiastically when he saw her enter. Karen had come in from being caught in a sudden pouring rain that pelted noisily into her purple vest. Her hair wasn't drenched but it only drooped gloomily, so Kai's next comment was quite stupid. "Lovely evening, isn't it?" His head turned so fast when he saw her that his purple bandanna fell askew.

"Yeah, whatever." Karen went up to greet Duke, the bartender and a good friend to her and her father. She had been working with him for three years, give or take a couple months, and was accustomed to just saying hi and getting on with whatever she had to do for the night. Duke had already known all of her affairs-nothing ever changed with her family life-and Duke would continue just being boring and occasionally very nosy.

Gotz was seated in his favorite place in the far back corner near the list of this month's events, eyeing her but still not speaking to her. She didn't know how many beers he'd had before she came in, but he was already drunk enough to talk about how he kept the useless vineyard so as not to lose his pride and money, although it was painfully obvious to everyone else--and embarrassing!--that he was already wasting his pride and money talking about his life's most intimate details. It was also sad how he would complain about her out loud for everyone, but even worse that Karen just shrugged it off with no shame. Karen thought that the whole village saw her as part of the town's screwed up family anyway, but indeed it was not so.

In particular, the gentlemen who visited here rather liked Karen. She was smart and polite, and carried herself well in a bar without flirting. She knew how to drink responsibly, and she could answer smart questions with smart answers about wine and other things. People like Florist Lillia's husband (Basil) and the mailman (Harris) were kind enough to greet her casually, and everyone left her alone to ponder things whenever she needed.

Paying attention only to her fingernails, she let everyone order for themselves and only distributed menus to the three small tables. The door creaked open at 9:30, at a time when the usual four or five guests were already in here or ready to leave, and in walked someone that Karen had never seen before. She didn't turn around, but felt the air rush in. Karen knew that familiar smell and feeling of hard work, a mix of clean sweat and rain. Still, she didn't put down her emery board--only looked at the newcomer out of the corner of her eye.

He was fairly tall, maybe about just her height. It was hard to see many of the details of that blue cap he wore, but one wave of brown hair stuck out of it (he wore the cap backwards). He had skin that was the palest of white, not yet suntanned, so she could tell that he hadn't been in the village long.

A couple people waved to him and hollered, "Hey Jack!!" so she supposed that he had been here for quite awhile. This said Jack was wiping his face off with a handkerchief he pulled out of the pocket of his denim overalls. He was thin but looked nonetheless like a harmless and mentally sane guy. Karen could only guess he looked a little bit older than her, and when she finally caught a good look when he approached the bar, she saw his eyes-a very clear, abnormally clear, brown.

"Hmmph," Karen said to herself only loud enough for her to hear and sulked. A new guy. So-freakin'-what. That was the last thing she needed to deal with was a new person in town to point a finger at her and ask why she was the way she was.

But at the same time... he was fairly cute. It was too bad that she wouldn't be talking to him anytime soon. Tourists never lasted long after they had seen all of Flower Bud Village. Karen distinctly remembered one time in which a handsome tourist from the city had came by the bar, complaining about their not having cable television; although who would want to spend time inside watching TV when they came to a simple, scenic countryside village in the first place?

"Just make yourself comfortable, Jack," Duke smiled and handed him a menu. This new boy sat at a stool near Jeff, the bakery master, in front of the counter and stared daydreamily into the menu.

"Hi," Jack said to her when he caught sight of her, which hadn't been long after Duke turned away to prepare a complicated new drink. Karen snorted; she'd heard all about how guys used stupid pickup lines in the city.

"Well, you don't look familiar," she replied. Step one in sending him home rejected, heh heh. She put on that false, friendly bartender's smile, that one she'd learned from Duke. It was the kind of smile that showed you innocent friendship, but at the same time you felt that the bartender knew all of your personal affairs and wanted to just be nice in public. "I suppose it doesn't matter, though. You won't be here long anyway," she continued speedily.

Jack looked perplexed. His face took on not only a confused look, but he burst into a little chuckle when Karen turned sharply on the heel of her boot and stalked off to a table in the corner to wipe it down with a rag.

"O-kay.... Well, just so you know, I'm Jack," he offered a slight tone of kindness and bewilderment at the same time. He swiveled the leather top of his stool to face her, gripping it with both of his gloved hands. He dangled his legs and feet from it like a young boy, but his face had that seriousness of a man.

Karen pretended not to hear him and concentrated hard on wiping the tabletops.

"A rather cold girl, isn't she?" Jack turned to Duke. Though with her back facing them, she could feel Duke nod in those short, quick bobbing movements she knew so well. Duke presented him with a glass of wine made specially from the vineyard and Karen listened intently, leading the rag in the same slow circles in that same spot.

'So he thinks he can come around here and be a do-gooder', she thought gloomily. 'I'll just have to see what he can make of me.' 


	4. Chapter 4

Karen hated and despised the mornings. Gotz was sober and Sasha always sat down with her coffee, not looking at her daughter at all and pretending nothing at all was happening. Mornings always meant waking up in her same old room, which looked rather dull now that all her childhood things had been moved out, that same room which was in the same house with her same ignorant parents. And it wasn't going to change.

At least not until Karen got married, she remembered. And that happiness, if such a happiness existed for a girl of her personality, seemed so distant from her she thought that she was sure to die an old maid in this house.

Remembering all this, she walked down the stairs as silently as she could in her heavy boots. If she was going to die an old maid here, she schemed, she would at least lead a life like her grandmother did. Her father's attempts to restore the vineyard were futile, and Kai was intimidated of practically every aspect of life on the vineyard, so she would have to restore the vineyard and find out the secret to her grandmother's famous Door to Heaven wine all by herself. Only this thought cheered her up about staying here if her dream of going to the city fell through.

Karen thought she had her life all figured out when Sasha told her, still without looking at her, that her best friend Ann was here to see her. Karen couldn't possibly leave Ann, at least without a special event before her departure. Ann, at times, was her only window to the possibility of an outside world. The atmosphere Ann lived in was open with enough fresh air for the humans and animals alike. She had never been to Green Ranch before, at least not past the gate, but had a pretty good idea what the leading farm of Flower Bud Village was like.

"Aren't you going to say goodbye to your mother?" Ann peered around the doorway curiously when Karen stalked out the front door.

"Nope." Karen flipped her hair behind her shoulder and continued walking toward the village with her. Only seldomly did they do this anymore, but the two best friends used to make a habit of walking along the cobblestone sidewalks of the main part of Flower Bud, scheming and dreaming of the distant future.

"Tell me a story, or something," Karen asked of her when they began to circle Ann's cousin Rick's tool shop. "I'm dying for some news or entertainment, anything besides my life."

"Nothing much here," Ann looked up at her. The strawberry-blonde stuffed her hands into the pockets of her overalls. "But the other girls have been talking about the new guy. Have you seen him?"

"Oh," Karen sniffed, remembering what she had seen and heard in the bar last night. "That Jack fellow, right? I haven't really spoken to him; you see he won't be here very long anyway."

"That's too bad," Ann's face fell, "because I kinda let him have that pony. Cliffgard's brother. He seemed like a really nice guy, so I gave it to him." With the feeling that Karen would voice out her disapproval, Ann didn't look at her friend. Instead she kicked aside a few pebbles in the crevices of the sidewalk and acted as if it were really no big deal, but inside she couldn't hide that it would have been a big mistake. Ann never made a mistake in her love for animals, and although the two friends were very frank with each other, Ann didn't want to talk about Jack being a nice guy if Karen didn't like him.

"What do you mean, you gave him a pony? He's staying?" Karen's green eyes widened instead, and she raised an eyebrow at her quizzically.

"You mean you don't remember that kind old man's farm? Jack is his grandson."

"You're KIDDING!!!!"

"No, I'm not. Jack inherited the farm, although you wouldn't tell immediately since he arrived so late." Karen had stopped walking but Ann, still shuffling her feet, didn't notice.

"No, I sure couldn't tell. Gosh, I didn't know that!....So you gave him a horse. You must have confidence in him, then."

"Not really. I mean, he's from the city and he's only been here like once when he was younger, and he's sort of off to a good start. I couldn't deny him Cliff's brother after looking at those eyes and his face; you can tell he really, really loves animals."

"What's he like?"

"Nice, I guess. Like I said, he likes animals, so he can't possibly be a bad person. You know how they say, all people whom animals like are nice. And between you and me," Ann leaned in, "he's kinda good-looking!"

"Is he now?" Karen folded her arms, entertained. She'd definitely have to pay closer attention this time!

"Yeah. He's up in the mountain like all the time, if you ever wanna take a good look."

"I most certainly will." After saying that, Karen smiled in a devilish way she hadn't smiled in a very long time. 


End file.
